The Republican and Democratic Parties: What they have done, and what th, 
 
 propose to do. 
 
 S P E E C 11 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. HENRY WILSON, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 REPUBLICAN MASS MEETING AT BANGOR, ME., 
 
 AUG-UST 27, 1868. 
 
 Published by the Union Republican Congressional Committee, Washington, D. C, 
 
 Fellow-Citizens of Maine : 
 
 Once again the Constitution imposes upon 
 the citizens of the United States the election 
 of a chief magistrate. This high duty finds 
 the people ranged in two great political organ¬ 
 izations. Each has a name, a history, a plat¬ 
 form of principles, a programme of policies, 
 and a candidate. To one of these organiza¬ 
 tions the people, on the third of November, 
 will commit the precious interests of the nation. 
 
 the two parties. 
 
 I propose to speak of the Republican party 
 and of the Democratic party—what each has 
 done, what each proposes to do. Holy Writ 
 teaches us that the tree is known by its fruit— 
 that man is judged by his deeds. During the 
 past fourteen years the Republican and Demo¬ 
 cratic parties have striven for the mastery. 
 Their policies have blossomed into fruits, their 
 principles have ripened into deeds. By their 
 fruits shall they be known—by their deeds 
 shall they be judged. By the exacting stand¬ 
 ards of patriotism and of liberty the ages 
 measure public men and political organiza¬ 
 tions. Let us summon these two parties before 
 us. Let us apply to them the infallible tests 
 of love of country and devotion to the God- 
 given rights of man, by which they must 
 stand or fall, before the living present and the 
 ages yet to be. (Applause.) 
 
 In 1852 the Whig and Democratic parties 
 contended for the last time for mastery. Then 
 the great party, that had sometimes opposed a 
 hesitating and feeble resistance to the aggres¬ 
 sive demands of the Slave interest, accepted 
 the humiliating conditions of the slave mas¬ 
 ters, fought its last battle, received a crushing 
 defeat, staggered on, aimless and purposeless, 
 
 for a few months, and then ingloriously per¬ 
 ished ; thus fulfilling the prophetic words of 
 the dying Webster, that, after that election, 
 “ the Whig party would exist only in history.” 
 
 On the 4th of March, 1853, the victorious 
 Democracy received, from the nerveless hand 
 of its fallen rival, the administration of the 
 national government. In full possession of all 
 its departments everywhere, sustained by pop¬ 
 ular favor, the exultant Democracy ostenta¬ 
 tiously gloried in its complete subserviency to 
 that all-exacting power which had dishonored, 
 and then smitten down, its great rival. Alike 
 in victory or defeat, the Democratic party had 
 for twenty years bowed to the slave propagan¬ 
 dists. At their bidding it had cloven down 
 the right of petition and the freedom of speech, 
 arraigned the illustrious Adams and censured 
 the fearless Giddings; annexed Texas, “ to 
 give,” in the words of Hamilton of Carolina, 
 “ a Gibraltar to the South,” and “ to add,” in 
 the jubilant language of Henry A. Wise, 
 “ more weight to her end of the beam ;” re¬ 
 jected the Wilmot Proviso, and given the slave 
 masters the right to range, with their fettered 
 bondmen, over Utah and New-Mexico ; enacted 
 the fugitive slave code of inhumanities, and 
 sanctified the unholy compromises of 1850-; 
 pledged itself to abide by that legislation, and 
 to resist the renewal of the slavery agitation. 
 This low bending of the knee to the dark spirit 
 of slavery had seemingly won for the chiefs of 
 the Democracy permanent power and the glit¬ 
 tering prizes of ambition. 
 
 democratic extension of slavery. 
 
 When Congress met, in 1853, President 
 Pierce congratulated the nation on “ the sense 
 of repose and security,” and gave his pledge 
 
 JOHN A. CRAY A GREEN, PRINTERS, NEW-YORK. 
 
2 
 
 ■hat this “ repose is to receive no shock during 
 liny official term.” These soothing words, 
 'however, did not appease the lust of dominion 
 and the greed of power. Those words of ex¬ 
 ultation—that pledge of unbroken repose— 
 had hardly made the tour of the Republic, ere 
 the nation was startled by the faith-breaking 
 demand for the repeal of the Missouri Com¬ 
 promise of 1820. Lusting for dominion, the 
 slave propagandists cast their hungry eyes 
 upon the magnificent territory, lying in the 
 heart of the continent, into which slavery was 
 forever forbidden to enter — a domain which 
 free labor, secure in the plighted faith of the 
 third of a century, held as its rightful in¬ 
 heritance. Demanding that this vast domain, 
 covering the pathway to the Pacific, should be 
 opened to them, they bade the ever-obedient 
 Democracy remove the landmarks of freedom, 
 however it might “ shock” the “ sense of repose 
 and security.” 
 
 But this faith-violating demand for the re¬ 
 moval of the landmarks set up by the Congress 
 of 1820 to protect a region larger than the 
 French empire when Napoleon gazed upon 
 “ the sea of flame,” whose billows swept over 
 the ancient capital of the Czars, stirred the 
 nation to its profoundest depths. After a fierce 
 struggle of four months, the faithless propo¬ 
 sition received the approval of the Democratic 
 Congress, the Democratic President, and the 
 Democratic party. But that crowning victory 
 shattered the ranks of political organizations. 
 The Whig party was broken utterly. Hundreds 
 of thousands left the disordered ranks of the 
 Democracy. Nearly a million and a half of 
 men ranged themselves together to recover 
 that lost territory—to oppose the further ex¬ 
 tension of slavery and the longer domination 
 of slave masters. Seldom, if ever, in the his¬ 
 tory of nations, has man been inspired by 
 .higher aims than then fired the bosoms of 
 American citizens thus brought together by the 
 needs of their endangered country. 
 
 In the ranks of this rising party gathered 
 the noblest spirits of the land ; the Christian, 
 upon whose vision flashed the imperative in¬ 
 junction of Holy Writ—break every yoke— 
 undo the heavy burden—let the oppressed go 
 free ; the Scholar, who found, in the pages of 
 the mighty dead of all ages, testimonies that 
 deepened his convictions and quickened his 
 zeal for the equal rights of struggling human¬ 
 ity ; the Philanthropist, who saw. as he gazed 
 into the grave of perished nations, that slavery 
 poisoned their lives, and hastened their decline 
 and death. Into this new organization came 
 also the veteran Abolitionist, who, with 
 Brougham, scouted “ the wild and guilty fan¬ 
 tasy that man can hold property in man,” and 
 who had proclaimed emancipation to be the 
 duty of the master and the right of the slave, 
 when he ” held,” in the words of Whittier, 
 “ property, liberty, and life itself at the mercy 
 of lawless mobsthe Free Soiler, who believed 
 with William Ellery Clianning, that to extend 
 slavery “ we invite the scorn, indignation, and 
 abhorrence of the world :” the Whig, who be¬ 
 lieved with Adams that “ slavery taints the 
 very sources of moral principle ;” with Clay, 
 that “ it is a grievous wrong no contingency 
 can make rightwith Webster, that “ it is 
 
 opposed to the whole spirit of the Gospel, and 
 to the teachings of Jesus Christ :” and the 
 Democrat, in whose ear lingered the deathless 
 words of Jefferson and Madison, the Democrat¬ 
 ic leaders of our earlier times. This political 
 organization, born of the holier aspirations of 
 the people, became the Republican party. Is 
 it matter for wonder, then, that between this 
 party—the product of the highest ideas of the 
 Christian civilization of the Western World— 
 and that party, inheriting the maddening 
 passions, cruel prejudices, and disorganizing 
 theories that nurture slavery and develop its 
 power, there should have been, during these 
 fourteen years, conflicts of ideas, principles, 
 and policies which have shaken society to its 
 foundation ? 
 
 Ere this party could make a national organ¬ 
 ization or find a name, it was forced into action. 
 To silence the protests of free labor, whose 
 inheritance they were despoiling, the Demo¬ 
 cratic chiefs beguiled the people with the illu¬ 
 sions of “ squatter sovereignty.” The people 
 of the Territories were to be left “ perfectly 
 free to vote slavery down or vote slavery up.” 
 But the men who had ruthlessly violated the 
 plighted faith of the nation did not hesitate to 
 violate their own pledges to the toiling men 
 who were striving to make homes and found 
 the institutions of freedom beyond the Mis¬ 
 souri. The slave propagandists, so long ac¬ 
 customed to unquestioned supremacy, were 
 startled by the grand uprising of the hosts of 
 freedom, and the determined purpose of free 
 labor to recover its lost inheritance. (Loud ap¬ 
 plause.) They saw that, unless they could 
 thwart the champions of free labor, their cri¬ 
 minal victory was but a barren triumph. 
 
 They sounded the alarm. They bade their 
 brutal tools invade Kansas, seize ballot-boxes, 
 elect legislatures, enact slave codes, silence 
 free speech, and bathe its soil with blood. 
 Faithfully did the Democratic party toil in 
 Kansas, in Congress, in the Executive depart¬ 
 ments, everywhere, to execute these decrees. 
 Hordes of border ruffians rushed into the ter¬ 
 ritory, usurped the government, enacted slave 
 codes, robbed, burned, and murdered. In 
 Congress their champions were hardly less 
 brutal than in the wilds of that distant region. 
 Charles Sumner portrayed their crimes, and 
 he was smitten down on the floor of the Sen¬ 
 ate by a “ brutal, murderous, and cowardly 
 assault.” Reeder and Walker and Stanton, 
 striving to right the wrongs of the Free State 
 settlers, were removed by the Democratic ad¬ 
 ministrations of Pierce and Buchanan. In 
 obedience to imperative demands, the weak 
 and wicked administration of James Buchanan 
 strove to force through Congress, by the cor¬ 
 rupting appliances of Executive patronage, 
 the Lecompton constitution. Defeated in 
 these efforts, the Democracy successfully re¬ 
 sisted her admission under her free constitu¬ 
 tion, until its power was broken by the trea¬ 
 son and secession of its Southern chiefs. (A 
 voice: “ That’s so.”) 
 
 To the faith-breaking abrogation of the Mis¬ 
 souri prohibition, to the border ruffian foray, 
 to the slave codes, to the lawlessness that 
 bathed that beautiful land in blood, to the re¬ 
 movals of Reeder and Walker and Stanton, to 
 
V 
 
 3 
 
 the Lecompton constitution, to each and all of 
 these, the Republican party persistently op¬ 
 posed every means sanctioned by reason, by 
 humanity, and religion ; and this untiring pur¬ 
 pose, this persistent constancy, baffled the 
 efforts of the Democracy, broke the line of the 
 advancing slave power, and gave to the Union 
 a new Commonwealth radiant with liberty. 
 Kansas, assured to freedom, was the first fruits 
 of the Republican party, whose history now 
 glitters with brilliant deeds and glorious 
 achievements. 
 
 When, in 1856, lawless violence reddened the 
 sods with the blood, and illumined the skies 
 with the burning cabins, of the Free State 
 settlers, the Democratic party met in national 
 convention, reaffirmed its fatal policy, nomi¬ 
 nated James Buchanan, and went into the 
 election completely dominated by the slave 
 power. Well might the impulsive Keitt boast- 
 ingly exclaim, “ The South has the general 
 control of the Democratic party.” The Repub¬ 
 lican party, too, met in national convention, 
 denied the authority of Congress, or any terri¬ 
 torial legislature, or any other power, to give 
 legal existence to slavery in the Territories, 
 asserted the power and the duty of Congress to 
 prohibit it in the Territories, and proclaimed 
 its belief, with the fathers, in the self-evident 
 truth that all men are created equal. (Cries 
 of “ Good.”) 
 
 THE ISSUES JOINED. 
 
 The issues were clearly defined and distinctly 
 presented. The Republican party, inspired by 
 patriotism and liberty, appealed to the people, 
 by all that was noblest and holiest in humanity, 
 to rescue the endangered nation. The Demo¬ 
 cratic party, guided by the disciples of Calhoun, 
 upon whose dazzled vision loomed up in the 
 near future a confederation of slaveholding 
 commonwealths, raised the startling war-cry 
 of disunion. Slidell, the master-spirit of the 
 Buchanan canvass, proclaimed, “ If Fremont 
 should be elected, the Union would be dis¬ 
 solved.” Mason was for “ the separation of the 
 States.” Butler declared, if Fremont should 
 be chosen, “ I should advise my legislature to 
 go at the tap of the drum.” Toombs announced 
 that, if Fremont was elected, “the Union 
 would be dissolved, and ought to be dissolved.” 
 Keitt emphatically asserted that, “ If Fremont 
 is elected, adherence to the Union is treason to 
 liberty,” that “the Southern man, who will 
 submit to his election, is a traitor and a cow¬ 
 ard.” Brooks, who would not “ post a sentinel 
 who would not swear that slavery was right,” 
 was, if Fremont should be elected, “ for the 
 people rising in their majesty, above the laws 
 and the leaders, taking the power into their 
 own hands, going by concert, or not by concert, 
 and laying the strong arm of Southern free¬ 
 men upon the treasury and the archives of the 
 government.” Henry A. Wise, who would “ in¬ 
 troduce slavery into the heart of the North,” 
 was ready to seize the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal, 
 the Norfolk Navy Yard, to march on Washing¬ 
 ton with twenty thousand men, and to put the 
 military forces of Virginia upon a war footing, 
 so that her chivalry might “ hew their bright 
 way through all opposing legions.” The air 
 was burdened with the seditious, revolution¬ 
 
 ary, and treasonable utterances of Democratic 
 orators and presses. 
 
 While these menaces were falling thick and 
 fast upon the ear of the nation, the Republi¬ 
 cans everywhere avowed their unabated attach¬ 
 ment to their country and their government. 
 The crimes against Kansas, the mobbings, 
 scourgings, and lyncliings in the South, did not 
 shake their steady faith in Republican institu¬ 
 tions, while they intensified their love of 
 country. Test the Republican party in its 
 first great national struggle, by the standard 
 of patriotism. Does not that unerring ter-t re¬ 
 veal the glorious fact that it was loyal in 
 thought, word, and deed ? Tested by that 
 standard, was not the Democratic party more 
 than tainted with disloyalty ? 
 
 DEMOCRATIC DISUNION THREATS. 
 
 In the contest between the vital forces of 
 slavery extension and slavery restriction, the 
 Republicans accepted as their faith the creed of 
 human equality. They turned for instruction 
 and guidance to the great men of the South of 
 cur earlier times. They saw, with Washing¬ 
 ton, “the direful effects of slavery.” They 
 believed, with Madison, that it “ was a dread¬ 
 ful calamity ;” with Monroe, that “ it preyed 
 upon the vitals of the Union;” with George 
 Mason, that “ it brought the curse of Heaven 
 upon a country;” and, with Jefferson, they 
 “ trembled when they remembered that God is 
 just and that his justice will not sleep forever.” 
 They saw that millions of acres, of the 
 finest soil of the western world, were, in the 
 words of one of the sons of the Old Dominion, 
 “barren, desolate, and seared, as if by the 
 avenging hand of heaven.” They saw, too, that 
 slavery had not only scarred the fields of the 
 South, but that it had more deeply scarred the 
 face of humanity, that its ruinous power was 
 visibly written on the foreheads of the bond- 
 men, and on the foreheads, too, of millions of 
 our own proud race. They saw that it dis¬ 
 honored labor, created, in the words of Olm¬ 
 sted, “ a devilish, undisguised., and recognized 
 contempt for all humbler classes.” Accepting 
 these teachings, and realizing the measureless 
 evils and sumless agonies of slavery, they 
 strove, with unflagging resolution, to conse¬ 
 crate the territorial possessions of the Republic 
 —all it then possessed and all that it might 
 thereafter acquire—to freedom and free insti¬ 
 tutions. 
 
 In this great contest of 1856 the Democratic 
 party disowned the creed of the fathers, and 
 accepted die theories of the school of Calhoun. 
 The Declaration of Independence was pro¬ 
 nounced false and fallacious, and free society a 
 “ failure,” “ a conglomeration of greasy me¬ 
 chanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers,” 
 not “ fit associates for Southern gentlemen’s 
 body servants.” These sentiments, so con¬ 
 temptuous of the toiling millions, passed unre¬ 
 buked by Northern Democrats, who followed 
 their leaders with craven srul and fettered 
 lip. Tested by the standard or' Liberty, was 
 not the Republican party bravely, nobly, 
 righteously right? Was not the Democratic 
 party cowardly, and ignobly, wickedly wrong ? 
 (Voices : “ Yes, yes.”) In the lights of to-day 
 
4 
 
 what friend of human rights, the wide world 
 over, would blur or stain that bright record of 
 Republican fidelity to the sacred cause of 
 human nature ? Who would not efface, if he 
 could, for the honor of his race, that dark and 
 ever darkening record of Democratic apostasy 
 to freedom ? 
 
 Although the Democracy came out of the 
 contest of 185G victorious, its chiefs could not 
 fail to see that it escaped defeat by the 
 timidity of that conservatism which shrank 
 appalled before revolutionary menaces. In 
 that grand uprising, in that doubtful struggle 
 on the prairies of Kansas, the slave masters 
 saw their waning power. Coming to the 
 realization that every enduring principle of 
 national policy, every permanent interest of 
 the people must continue to be hostile to their 
 ascendency, conscious that they could not 
 much longer retain power, they addressed 
 themselves, with earnest purpose, to the con¬ 
 solidation of the South, appealing to Southern 
 interest, and firing Southern ambition with 
 the idea of a splendid empire, commanding, 
 with its tropical productions and its millions of 
 slaves, the commerce of the world. They fired 
 the Southern heart, brain, and soul, with ma¬ 
 lignant hate and bitter scorn of Yankee insti¬ 
 tutions, with lofty contempt of free society, 
 and haughty defiance of the national govern¬ 
 ment. (Cries of “ Shame.”) Resolved, in the 
 words of Calhoun, whose disciples they were, 
 “ to force the slavery issue upon the North,” 
 they wrung from the Supreme Court the 
 Dred Scott dicta. They bade New-Mexico 
 enact a slave code, and also a code for the 
 servitude of white laboring men. They sent 
 Walker to Central America to win territory, 
 “ for,” in the words of Brown of Mississippi, 
 “ the planting and spreading of slavery,” 
 and they sighed for Cuba, which they could 
 not clutch. 
 
 REBEL YELLS IN CONGRESS. 
 
 When the nation was looking forward to the 
 approaching presidential election of 1860, these 
 Southern Democratic leaders, frenzied with 
 the fanaticism of slavery, came into the 36th 
 Congress haughtily threatening the dismem¬ 
 berment of the Union, if the people should 
 choose a chief magistrate opposed to slavery 
 extension, protection, and domination. The 
 halls of Congress again rang with the revolu¬ 
 tionary menaces of incipient treason. Jeffer¬ 
 son Davis, foremost among that unhallowed 
 combination, had spent the summer of 1859 
 in the North. Returning to Mississippi in the 
 autumn of that year with assurances, that, if 
 the slavery contest came to blows, “ the North¬ 
 ern Democrats would throttle the Republicans 
 in their tracks,” he advised the people of the 
 South to turn their old muskets into Minie 
 rifles, prepare powder, shot, and shell ; for if 
 the Republicans should elect the next Presi¬ 
 dent, he was “ for asserting the independence 
 of Mississippi, for the immediate withdrawal 
 from the Union.” Brown, not to be outdone 
 by his rival, “ would make a refusal to acquire 
 territory, because it was to be slave territory, 
 a cause of disunion.” Clay declared that 
 Alabama, “ if she is not recreant to all that 
 State pride, integrity, and duty demand, will 
 
 never submit to your authority.” Toombs 
 called upon Georgia to “ listen to no vain 
 babblings, no treacherous jargon about overt 
 acts ; the enemy is at your door, wait not for 
 him at the hearthstone, meet him at the 
 door-sill.” Iverson would not even submit to 
 the election of John Sherman for speaker. 
 “ In that event,” he exclaimed, “ I would walk 
 out of this Capitol, I would counsel my con¬ 
 stituents instantly to dissolve all political ties 
 with a party and a people who thus trample 
 on our rights.” Clingman would wait for no 
 overt act, for “ no other ‘ overt act ’ can so im¬ 
 peratively demand resistance on our part as 
 the simple election of their candidate.” 
 
 The hall of the House echoed with these 
 seditious mutterings of the disloyal Demo¬ 
 cracy. Democratic office-holders, thronging 
 the galleries, applauded the guilty menace to 
 ‘ shiver the Union from turret to foundation 
 stone.” Slavery, disloyal in every fibre of its 
 being, seemed to have infused its malignant 
 passion, its deadliest poison, into the brain, 
 the soul, the heart of the Democracy. Tlieir 
 record, for that winter, is a record of shame¬ 
 less apostasy to the country, to the liberties of 
 the people, to the civilization of the age. In 
 that time of Democratic apostasy, the Repub¬ 
 licans maintained with unflinching firmness 
 the unity of the Republic, the authority of the 
 government, and the rights of mankind. Who¬ 
 ever reads the records of that day will realize 
 that Republicanism was inspired by the gene¬ 
 rous, elevating, ennobling spirit of Liberty, 
 and that the Democracy was dominated by the 
 narrow, vulgar, brutal barbarism of slavery. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE OF 1860. 
 
 In the Presidential election of 1860, the 
 Democracy, that had borne the banners of 
 slavery, won its victories, and shared its crimes, 
 was severed into two factions ; but these fac¬ 
 tions struggled right on with equal subservi¬ 
 ency to their old masters. One faction 
 proclaimed, in the language of President 
 Buchanan, that, “by virtue of the Constitu¬ 
 tion the master has the right to take his slave 
 into the Territories as property and have it 
 protected there under the Federal Constitu¬ 
 tion,” that “ neither Congress nor the Terri¬ 
 torial legislature, nor any human power has 
 any authority to annul or impair this vested 
 right.” This section of the Democracy, thus 
 resolved to force the nation to accept the 
 creeds, acknowledge the sway, and bear the 
 crimes of slave propagandism, nominated 
 John C. Breckinridge. This slave code sec¬ 
 tion went into the canvass breathing out 
 threats of civil war. They would permit the 
 Republicans to win power only “ over the pros¬ 
 trate bodies of the slain sons of the South.” 
 The squatter sovereignty section, timidly 
 shrinking from the logic of its “ great princi¬ 
 ple,” submitted to the Supreme Court, which 
 had already made the Dred Scott decision, the 
 transcendent question, whether a million and 
 a half of the square miles of the Republic 
 should be gladdened by the footsteps and 
 beautified by the hand of free labor, or seared 
 and blasted by the feudal curse, whose whips 
 and yokes insult humanity, went into the 
 
5 
 
 canvass under the leadership of Douglas, who 
 “ did not care whether slavery was voted up 
 or voted down,” and of Herschel V. Johnson, 
 who believed that “ capital should own labor.” 
 
 The Republican party, rejecting with horror 
 the wicked dogma that the Constitution of 
 Christian America carried slavery wherever 
 it went, and that the nation’s flag protected it 
 wherever it waved, disavowing the abhorrent 
 idea that capital should own labor, caring 
 whether slavery should be voted down or 
 voted up, bravely accepted the duties imposed 
 upon it by the needs of the country and the 
 providence of Almighty God. Assembling in 
 national convention, it proclaimed that the 
 maintenance of the principle that all men are 
 created equal, is essential to the preservation 
 of our Republican institutions ; that it held in 
 abhorrence all schemes for disunion ; that the 
 dogma that the Constitution carried slavery 
 into the Territories was a dangerous political 
 heresy, revolutionary in its tendency, and that 
 the normal condition of the Territories was 
 that of freedom. Proclaiming, as its faith and 
 creed, this platform, which breathed the vital 
 spirit of freedom, patriotism, justice, and hu¬ 
 manity, it presented to the nation Abraham 
 Lincoln, whose name will linger in the hearts 
 and in the memories of men so long as Pa¬ 
 triotism and Liberty shall have shrines on 
 earth. (Loud and long-continued applause.) 
 
 These two sections of the Democracy, though 
 “ distinct like the billows,” were yet “ one like 
 the sea,” in fidelity to the interests of slavery. 
 Though rent and torn, it went into the canvass, 
 appealing to the brutal passions, selfish in¬ 
 stincts, and unmanly fears of the country. The 
 leaders of these factions vied with each other 
 in scoffing at the self-evident truths of the De¬ 
 claration of Independence. Breckinridge, the 
 leader of one faction, pronounced these truths 
 “ abstractions,” which would “ lead our coun¬ 
 try rapidly to dissolution.” Douglas, the chief 
 of the other faction, defined those sublime 
 truths to mean, that “ British subjects, on this 
 continent, were equal to British subjects born 
 and residing in Great Britain.” Abraham Lin¬ 
 coln pronounced the great truth of that im¬ 
 mortal declaration to be “ applicable to all 
 men and all times,” that “ to-day and in all 
 coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stum¬ 
 bling-block to the harbingers of reappearing 
 tyranny and oppression.” The Republican 
 party, believing, with its leader, that “ this is 
 a world of compensations, and he who would 
 be no slave must consent to have no slave,” 
 that “ those who deny freedom to others de¬ 
 serve it not for themselves, and, under a just 
 God, can not long retain it,” appealed to the 
 people to rally to the standard of imperiled 
 liberty. Nearly two millions of men, regard¬ 
 less of the treasonable menaces and revolu¬ 
 tionary teachings of the Democratic leaders, 
 and the ignoble and spiritless submission of 
 the Democratic masses, thronged to the ballot- 
 box, dethroned the slave power, and made 
 Abraham Lincoln President of the United 
 States. (Great cheering.) 
 
 South-Carolina, trained for thirty years in 
 the school of treason, leaped headlong into re¬ 
 bellion ; other States quickly followed her ex¬ 
 ample. Then the vaunted Southern Confede¬ 
 
 racy, the dream of Slave perpetuatists for a 
 generation, rose, on the basis that involuntary 
 servitude was the normal condition of the 
 black race in America. Coming into Congress 
 with official oaths on their perjured lips, these 
 architects of ruin plotted conspiracies in Con¬ 
 gress, in the Cabinet, in the Army, in the 
 Navy, everywhere, for the dismemberment of 
 the Union and the death of the nation. The 
 Republic of Washington seemed doomed to a 
 swift and ignominious dissolution—to be strick¬ 
 en from the roll of nations. While these con¬ 
 spirators were organizing treason, seducing 
 the weak, and corrupting the venal, while they 
 were seizing forts, arsenals, arms, and millions 
 of public property, raising batteries for assault 
 or defence, firing upon the old flag, which 
 covered bread for starving soldiers, they were 
 receiving, not the withering, blasting rebukes 
 of insulted patriotism, but aid and comfort 
 from their Northern Democratic associates. 
 
 The Democratic President, poor, weak old 
 man, made haste to assure the insurrectionary 
 chiefs that he had arrived at the conclusion 
 “ that no power had been delegated to Con¬ 
 gress to coerce into submission a State which 
 is attempting to withdraw or which has en¬ 
 tirely withdrawn from the confederacy.” At¬ 
 torney-General Black pronounced against the 
 power of the government to coerce a seceding 
 State, and maintained that the attempt to do 
 so “ would be an expulsion of such State from 
 the Union,” and would absolve all the States 
 “from their Federal obligations,” and the peo¬ 
 ple from contributing “ their money or their 
 blood to carry on a contest like that.” Did 
 not these disorganizing opinions of the Presi¬ 
 dent and of the Attorney-General, showing 
 the utter impotency of the imperiled nation, 
 “ give aid and comfort ” to the conspirators ? 
 Did not these sworn guardians of the nation 
 leave the government weaponless, at the mer¬ 
 cy of the armed hands of the assassins of the 
 Union ? 
 
 Jefferson Davis, when he assumed the Presi¬ 
 dency of the Confederate government, and pro¬ 
 claimed that “ we have entered upon a career 
 of independence, and it must be inflexibly pur¬ 
 sued, through many years of controversy, with 
 our late associates of the Northern States,” 
 held the written assurance of ex-President 
 Pierce, who believed that the disruption of 
 the Union would not occur without “ blood,” 
 that “ the fighting will not be along Mason 
 and Dixon’s line merely, it will be within our 
 own borders, in our own streets.” Did not 
 this assurance of Franklin Pierce, that the 
 fighting would be in our streets, between our 
 own citizens, “ give aid and comfort ” to the 
 rebel President ? (Groans for Pierce.) 
 
 THE TREASONABLE DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Pendleton, who now felicitates himself upon 
 the fact that he imposed his policy, although he 
 could not impose himself, upon the Democratic 
 Convention, declared, in the House of Represen¬ 
 tatives, in the presence of his Democratic asso¬ 
 ciates, gleefully chuckling over the severed 
 Union, that “ armies, money, blood, can not 
 maintain this Union,” “ the whole scheme of 
 coercion is impracticable,” “ it is contrary to the 
 
6 
 
 genius and the spirit of the Constitution.” He, 
 who had never a word of cheer for the loyal, 
 assured the retiring conspirators that “ if they 
 must leave the family mansion, I would bid 
 them farewell so tenderly, that they would be 
 forever touched by the recollection.” Vallan- 
 digham, who has just forced the reluctant 
 Seymour to accept the proffered honors of the 
 New-York Convention, had, in that city, on 
 the eve of the Presidential election, when 
 meditated treason lowered over the country, 
 proclaimed that “ if any one of the States 
 should secede, I never would, as a Represent¬ 
 ative in Congress, vote one dollar whereby one 
 drop of American blood should be shed in civil 
 w r ar.” Referring to that early pledge of faith¬ 
 lessness to his country, after armed treason had 
 opened its batteries upon the steamer bearing 
 food to the famishing defenders of beleaguered 
 Sumter, he defiantly said, “ I deliberately re¬ 
 peat and reaffirm it, resolved, though I stand 
 alone, though all others yield and fall away, 
 to make it good to the last moment of my of¬ 
 ficial life.” Did not that pledge fire the hot 
 blood of the secessionists of South-Carolina ? 
 Did not the reaffirming of that unpatriotic 
 declaration excite the hopes and nerve the 
 arms of traitors aiming blows at the nation’s 
 life ? Did not that pledge, and the reaffirming 
 of that pledge, cause American blood to flow 
 in civil war? 
 
 In that time of peril, when the government 
 rocked beneath the blows rained upon it by 
 Democratic traitors ; in those days of anxiety 
 and gloom, when the hearts of the loyal 
 throbbed heavily over the sorrows of their 
 betrayed country, there came from Democratic 
 orators, Democratic presses, and Democratic 
 convocations, all over the North, bitter re¬ 
 proaches to loyalty, and words of cheer to 
 disloyalty. From the capital of the Empire 
 State, from that great Democratic Convention 
 at Tweddle Hall, Horatio Seymour sent forth 
 these words, to burden the patriotic men who 
 were maintaining the just power of the gov¬ 
 ernment, and to cheer on its deadliest foes: 
 “ Let us see if successful coercion by the North 
 is less revolutionary than successful secession 
 by the South.” Did not these disorganizing 
 words of Horatio Seymour sadden the coun¬ 
 try’s friend - and inspirit the country’s enemies ? 
 Were not .hese opinions, pledges, assurances 
 of Buchanan, Black, Pierce, Pendleton, Val- 
 landigham, and Seymour, inspirations to the 
 Southern leaders of secession and disunion ? 
 Did they not invite and incite ci\ T il war? 
 Does not the blood of our slain sons rest heav¬ 
 ily on the souls of our Democratic politicians ? 
 Did not these utterances of such exponents of 
 Northern Democracy linger in the memory of 
 Governor Orr, when he said to the men of 
 South-Carolina: “ Many of you will remember 
 that, when the Avar first commenced, great 
 hopes and expectations Avere held out by our 
 friends in the North and West that there 
 Avould be no Avar, and that, if it commenced, 
 it Avould be north of Mason and Dixon's line, 
 and that it would not be in the South” ? Did 
 not Horatio Seymour hold out “ great hopes 
 and expectations” to rebels, weaponed Avith 
 the bullet, in 1861 ? Does he not noAv hold 
 out “ great hopes and expectations” to Wade 
 
 Hampton, Forrest, and Robert Toombs, Avho 
 defiantly declares “ as we have no possibility 
 of fighting with the sword, let us fight Avitii 
 the ballot-box” ? (A Voice : “ Dovvn with the 
 traitors.”) 
 
 W hen Southern senators Avere announcing 
 that the slave States were intending to go out 
 of the Union, that a “Southern confederacy 
 Avill be formed, and it will be the most success¬ 
 ful government in the Avorld,” timid conser¬ 
 vatism demanded a compromise, by which the 
 nation, by irrepealable constitutional amend¬ 
 ments, Avas to recognize, establish, and protect 
 slavery in the Territories then held, or which 
 might thereafter be acquired South of 36° 30' ; 
 to deny poAver to Congress to abolish slavery 
 in the nation’s capital; to alloAv slave masters 
 and flesh jobbers to take slaves in and 
 through the free States ; to take from men of 
 African descent citizenship and suffrage ; and 
 to send out of the country, at the expense of 
 the Treasury of the United States, such free 
 negroes as the States might desire to have 
 removed. This most degrading, dishonoring, 
 and humiliating proposition—by far the 
 Avickedest proposition ever made in the in¬ 
 terests of slavery in America—was, in bitter 
 mockery, christened a “ Compromise.” This 
 compromise the nation Avas asked to accept, not 
 to bring South-Carolina and the Gulf States 
 back, but to keep the border States from going 
 out; not to bring pronounced rebels in, but to 
 keep quaking consen T atfves from going out. 
 Reason and conscience, love of country and of 
 the race, forbade the Republicans in Congress 
 to consummate that crime against the country 
 and its free institutions. They could not, they 
 dared not do so, even under the menaces of a 
 bloody civil Avar. They feared, if they should 
 change their country from a free to a slave¬ 
 holding nation, they Avould live amid the bitter 
 reproaches of a betrayed people, and then sink 
 into dishonored graves with the curses of earth 
 and of Heaven resting upon them forever. 
 
 TREASON OF BUCHANAN’S ADMINISTRATION 
 
 Day by day, during that terrible Avinter, the 
 Republicans in Congress, poAverless to sa\ T e, 
 saw with the profoundest sorroAv their riven 
 and shattered country sinking into the fathom¬ 
 less abyss of disunion. A Democratic Presi¬ 
 dent, a Democratic Attorney-General, had sur¬ 
 rendered the life-preserving powers of the gov¬ 
 ernment. A Democratic Secretary of the Trea¬ 
 sury was deranging the finances and sinking 
 the* national credit. A Democratic Secretary 
 of War Avas scattering the army, and sending 
 muskets, cannon, and the munitions ot Avar to 
 be clutched by rising traitors. A Democratic 
 Secretary* of the Interior Avas permitting the 
 robbery of trust funds, held by the go\ T ernment. 
 A Democratic Secretary of the Navy Avas ren¬ 
 dering that “ right arm” of the national service 
 powerless. A Democratic Mayor of the com¬ 
 mercial capital of the country Avas proposing 
 to make that capital a free city, independent 
 of the national government. Democratic lead¬ 
 ers were ostentatiously giving pledges “ ne\-er 
 to vote a man or a dollar” for coercion. Dem¬ 
 ocrats Avere giving their assurances that regi¬ 
 ments, marching to the coercion of the South, 
 
7 
 
 “ must pass over their dead bodies.” Officers 
 of the Senate were members of a secret organi¬ 
 zation, nightly plotting treason in the capital 
 of the nation. This uprising of traitors, these 
 pledges of Northern Democratic leaders, this 
 submission of the Democratic masses to the 
 plottings of the insurrectionists, rendered more 
 vulgarly insolent the champions of the rebel¬ 
 lion at the capital. Sam Houston had not called 
 together the Legislature to hasten Texas out 
 of the Union. Iverson said that if he did not 
 yield to the sentiment of the people, “ some 
 Texan Brutus may arise to rid Iris country of 
 this old, hoarv-headed traitor.” Mr. Seward 
 invited a calm discussion of the pending issues. 
 Clingman replied that “many of the free de¬ 
 baters were hanging on the trees of Texas.” 
 The unarmed “ Star of the West,” bearing food 
 to defenders of Sumter, was turned back by the 
 frowning batteries of treason. Wigfall taunt¬ 
 ingly told us that she had swaggered into 
 Charleston Harbor, had received a stunning 
 blow on the forehead, and staggered out help¬ 
 less, and we dare not resent it. But in that 
 “ dark and troubled night” of Democratic apos¬ 
 tasy, Republican hearts were gladdened by the 
 noble fidelity of three Democratic statesmen. 
 In being Democrats, Edwin M. Stanton, Joseph 
 Holt, and John A. Dix did not forget to be pa¬ 
 triots. While Horatio Seymour was sudden- 
 ing the hearts of the loyal by his unpatriotic 
 declaration, “ Let us see if successful coercion 
 by the North is less revolutionary than success¬ 
 ful secession by the South,” those same hearts 
 were thrilled by the immortal order of John 
 A. Dix, “ If any man hauls down the flag, shoot 
 him.” 
 
 At last, that long, gloomy, and terrible win¬ 
 ter ended, and the fourth of March gladdened 
 the longing eyes and burdened hearts of the 
 patriotic men who clung to their country with 
 deathless tenacity when clouds and darkness 
 were settling upon it. To that day, and to 
 Lincoln, they had looked as anxiously as Wel¬ 
 lington, in the crisis of Waterloo, looked “ for 
 night or for Blticher.” The riven and shatter¬ 
 ed government passed from the nerveless 
 hand of that weakness which betrayed like 
 treason, into the honest, brave, and strong grasp 
 of Abraham Lincoln. Then that huge, horrid, 
 and barbarizing despotism of the slave propa¬ 
 ganda sunk to rise no more. Against that 
 despotism the Republicans had struggled 
 through seven weary years, amid obloquy, 
 reproach, and insult. History would record 
 that, throughout that contest, they had acted 
 in harmony with the Constitution of their 
 country, with the teachings of its illustrious 
 framers, the utterances of poets, sages, and 
 philosophers, and the great and good of all the 
 ages, and with the commands of God’s holy 
 word. That stainless record gave assurance 
 to all the world that, in accepting the guar¬ 
 dianship of their imperiled country, they 
 would cherish it with all their hearts, and de¬ 
 fend it with all their hands. (Long continued 
 cheering.) 
 
 THE COMBAT OPENS. 
 
 Soon the men to whom the government had 
 been intrusted w'ere summoned to its defense. 
 Mr. Lincoln, in assuming the administration, 
 
 had proclaimed to his dissatisfied countrymen 
 of the South that “ the momentous issues of 
 civil war were in their hands.” But the rebel 
 chiefs, fearing that the already aroused pas¬ 
 sions of the South might not completely sever 
 the bonds of affection; fearing, too, the effect 
 of the closing words of his inaugural, where, 
 with such pathos, he said, “ The mystic chords 
 of memory, stretching from every battle-field 
 and patriot grave, to every living heart and 
 hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
 swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
 touched, as they surely will be, by the better 
 angels of our nature,” the rebel Secretary of 
 War ordered the batteries menacing Sumter to 
 open their fires upon that devoted fortress. 
 That order was swiftly obeyed. The flag of 
 united America came down, and the confede¬ 
 rate flag waved over its smoking ruins. Thus 
 was inaugurated, by Southern Democrats, that 
 great civil war in which 350,000 loyal lives 
 were sacrificed, 400,000 were wounded, $4,000,- 
 000,000 were expended, and the productive in¬ 
 dustries of the country burdened with a nation¬ 
 al debt of $2,500,000,000. To the full compre¬ 
 hension of everv intelligent man in America, 
 whose mind has not been poisoned by our 
 great national crime, nor maddened by parti¬ 
 sanship, slavery was the inspiration of this ter¬ 
 rible conflict, and the Democratic party its in¬ 
 strument, which must be held responsible, be¬ 
 fore the present and coming ages, for every 
 drop of blood, and every tear of sorrow, agony, 
 or affection; for every dollar already ex¬ 
 pended, and for every dollar of taxation which 
 must, in so many forms, and for so many years, 
 rest heavily on the capital and labor of the 
 country. When any one gazes on the grave of 
 some brave soldier who fell in our defense, 
 upon one wounded in the same stern conflict, 
 or upon the vacant chairs around the hearth¬ 
 stones of the land ; whenever lie is called to 
 contribute to the relief of the wives and chil¬ 
 dren of our slain countrymen ; whenever he 
 reads the tax list, or pays,,in some of its various 
 forms, his portion of our vast taxation, let him 
 not forget that all this is due to the apostasy 
 of the Democratic party—to the open treason 
 of its Davises, Toombs, and Masons of the 
 South, and the ill-concealed sympathy of the 
 Pierces, the Seymours, the Pendletons, and 
 their many other partisans at the North. 
 
 • THE UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The Republican administration promptly 
 accepted “ the momentous issues of civil war,” 
 thus forced upon it. The President immedi¬ 
 ately issued a call for 75,000 men to protect 
 the capital; which was followed, in a few days, 
 by another for 300,000, for the suppression of 
 the Rebellion. On the 4th of July, Congress 
 assembled, gave the President 500,000 men 
 and $500,000,000, and adopted the requisite 
 legislation for the organization and government 
 of the military forces of the United States. 
 The uprising of the people, startled by the 
 echoes of the cannon which treason trained on 
 Sumter, had silenced the rebel-sympathizing 
 Democracy. Little was now heard against 
 “ coercion ;” but Breckinridge, who yet lin¬ 
 gered in the Senate, and Powell, Pendleton, 
 
8 
 
 Cox, Vallandigham, and their Democratic 
 associates protested against “ the subjugation 
 of the South.” The Administration, sustained 
 by Congress, the united Republican party, and 
 many patriotic men of the Democratic and 
 other political organizations in the nation, 
 raised and sent into the field more than 2,000,- 
 000 men, created the most powerful navy that 
 ever rode the ocean, fought six hundred actions 
 upon land and sea, “ coerced” rebel States, 
 “ subjugated” the South, destroyed or captured 
 the rebel armies, and utterly annihilated the 
 power of the Confederate government; so that 
 a rebel bayonet no longer gleamed in the 
 Southern sun, nor a rebel banner waved on the 
 Southern breeze. 
 
 LOYAL DEMOCRATS FOR THE COUNTRY. 
 
 In the grand uprising of the people, after the 
 firing upon Sumter, many Democrats who had 
 followed the lead of Buchanan, Pierce, Sey¬ 
 mour, Pendleton, and their compeers, nobly 
 atoned for the past by consecrating themselves, 
 all they were and all they hoped to be, to their 
 country. During these seven years of trial, in 
 the field and in the councils of the nation, they 
 have associated their names forever with the 
 defenders of the country and the champions of 
 liberty ; but most of the leaders of the Democ¬ 
 racy bowed rather than yielded to the patri¬ 
 otic current that swept over the land. Poisoned 
 by slavery, dominated so long by the slave 
 power and the chiefs of the rebellion, they 
 trusted that the disappointments, losses, and 
 sacrifices of the war would bring a reaction, 
 and that their hour of triumph would soon 
 come. General John Cochrane, who well knew 
 these Democratic leaders, said, in a letter writ¬ 
 ten from the swamps of the Chickahominv, in 
 the early summer of 1862 : “ They will emerge 
 from their gloom as the shadows fall upon tlieir 
 country.” The shadows soon fell upon the 
 country. Disasters came to our armies. The 
 disaimointments and sacrifices of the war, and 
 Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation, 
 hastened the hoped-for reaction. State after 
 State pronounced against the Administration. 
 In their triumphs the Democratic leaders 
 indulged in words and acts showing unmistak- 
 ably to all the world that they regarded the 
 government of the United States and Abraham 
 Lincoln, not the government of the confede¬ 
 racy and Jefferson Davis, their foes. So un¬ 
 patriotic were the legislatures of Indiana and 
 Illinois that Governor Morton and Governor 
 Yates were forced to prorogue them and send 
 the conspirators to their homes. Democratic 
 orators, presses,and societies, all over the North, 
 assailed the Administration, struggling to sup¬ 
 press the rebellion, in language so violent, 
 seditious, and revolutionary, that it gave confi¬ 
 dence to the rebel councils and hope to the 
 rebel armies. Horatio Seymour, elected in the 
 disastrous autumn of 1862 governor of New- 
 York, over the patriotic and self-sacrificing 
 Wadsworth, professing to speak for a dissatis¬ 
 fied people, burdened by word and act the 
 great heart of Abraham Lincoln. To this 
 carping and fault-finding governor, Mr. Lin¬ 
 coln sent the very significant message, that “ if 
 he wants to be President of the United States, 
 
 he had better unite with me in preserving the 
 United States, to be president of.” 
 
 THE YALLANDIGHAM AND PENDLETON GANG. 
 
 Exhaustive marches and decimating battles 
 thinned the armies that carried upon their 
 glittering bayonets the faith of the Republic. 
 Their wasting ranks must be refilled with the 
 fresh blood of heroic manhood. The exhaust¬ 
 ing demands, early made on the country, the 
 pressing wants and high rewards of labor, 
 checked enlistments. To fill the ranks of the 
 country’s defenders, to equalize the burdens 
 of war between the States and sections of the 
 same States, the thirty-seventh Congress, in 
 its closing hours, passed an “ Act for enrolling 
 and calling out the national forces.” In pass¬ 
 ing that great measure, the Republicans in 
 Congress believed it would revive the droop¬ 
 ing heart of the people, fill the wasting ranks 
 of our battalions, carry dismay into the coun¬ 
 cils of treason, and give assurance to the 
 nations of the earth that the American people 
 had that spirit of personal sacrifice and heroic 
 endeavor which would insure the unity of the 
 Republic and the perpetuity of the nation. 
 But, unmindful of the pressing needs of the 
 bleeding country, the Democrats fiercely op¬ 
 posed its enactment. Vallandigham, pledged 
 to vote neither men nor money, denounced it 
 as a measure “ to abrogate the Constitution, 
 and erect upon the ruins of civil and political 
 liberty a stupendous structure of despotism.” 
 Pendleton and Yoorhees joined in its denun¬ 
 ciation. Cox would prevent the enrolling of 
 black men to fight the battles of the endan¬ 
 gered country. Democratic orators and presses, 
 open and secret societies, united in assailing a 
 measure that enabled the government to com¬ 
 mand the entire resources of the nation for its 
 defense. Fernando Wood and his Mozart 
 tribe, the crafty but irresolute Seymour, in¬ 
 stilled into the "too credulous ear of ignorance 
 poisonous words, inflaming its heart and mad¬ 
 dening its brain, till Murder, clutching its 
 weapon, and Arson, seizing its brand, reddened 
 the pavements of New-York with blood and 
 illumined her streets with the flames of burn¬ 
 ing asylums. (“ Down with Seymour!”) When 
 we consider these reckless utterances of men 
 who denied our right to coerce States or “ sub- 
 jugate the South,” the treasonable organiza¬ 
 tions of the “ Knights of the Golden Circle ” 
 and “ Sons of Liberty,” in the West, the 
 speeches of Democratic politicians who, 
 throughout the war, never uttered a word 
 that could be tortured into meaning that the 
 rtbel government, rebel armies, and rebel 
 people, were their enemies or the enemies of 
 their country, we do not wonder that rebel 
 chiefs and rebel presses, even after Lee's army 
 had been hurled back from the glorious field 
 of Gettysburg, Vicksburg had surrendered to 
 Grant, and Port Hudson to Banks, and the 
 waters of the Mississippi to the sea reflected 
 the stars of the national flag, boastfully pro¬ 
 claimed that “ the gore of Lincoln’s hated 
 minions wets the streets,” that the govern¬ 
 ment is “ cowering,” and that “ the days as 
 well as the soldiers of the Federal army are 
 numbered.” (Great applause.) 
 
9 
 
 WISDOM OF CONGRESS AND PATRIOTISM OF 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The Republican Administration had not 
 only to create armies and navies, but to per¬ 
 form the far more difficult task of providing 
 the vast resources to sustain a conflict so gigan¬ 
 tic. It established internal revenue systems, 
 revised the revenue laws, and established a 
 national banking system. The Republicans 
 may have committed some mistakes in the 
 details of their financial policy, but the success 
 of that policy is the marvel of men the world 
 over. Its wonderful success falsified the pre¬ 
 dictions of financial men in the old world and 
 in the new. Democrats have carped at it, 
 criticised it, misapprehended it, and misrepre¬ 
 sented it. Many of them predicted that the 
 bonds of the government would never be 
 redeemed, refused to purchase them them¬ 
 selves, or advise their friends to do so, and are 
 presenting now a fitting sequel to their early 
 and persistent opposition, by their seeming 
 anxiety and efforts to prove their ill-omened 
 predictions true. Horatio Seymour has it 
 authoritatively announced that he does not 
 own and never has owned one of the bonds of 
 the government. He is known to be a man 
 of large wealth, and to liavo inherited a for¬ 
 tune. During years of the war the country 
 owed hundred of millions to tho army it could 
 not pay. The heroes of Gettysburg and Vicks¬ 
 burg had gone months without payment ; 
 often the government was in debt five and six 
 months, and sometimes more, to our soldiers. 
 Brave men received and read to their com¬ 
 rades, around their camp-fires, letters from their 
 wives, begging for money to keep themselves 
 and their children from want. Men who faced 
 shot and shell in the field, were unmanned 
 and wept like children in their tents over let¬ 
 ters received from their homes, because of this 
 poverty of the national treasury. Was it not, 
 then, as patriotic to loan money to the govern¬ 
 ment to feed and clothe the country’s defen¬ 
 ders, and keep their wives and children from 
 want, as it was to confront that country’s ene 
 mies on the field of battle? Patriotic men, 
 and women, too, in all the conditions of life, 
 loaned money to the government, often to 
 their own inconvenience and disadvantage, to 
 support and pay those who were bleeding and 
 dying in it3 defense. And yet the Democratic 
 party has become so demoralized by blind, 
 unreasoning partisanship, that Horatio Sey¬ 
 mour, its candidate for the presidency, to 
 strengthen himself with the men of his party, 
 who would impair the credit and repudiate the 
 obligations of the government, incurred for its 
 salvation, has it authoritatively announced 
 that he has not now, and never had, a single 
 bond, though given for a purpose so sacred, 
 and to avert a peril so extreme. When hun¬ 
 dreds of thousands of our brave soldiers were 
 unpaid for months, leaving, of course, their 
 wives and children to great inconvenience, if 
 not to absolute and extreme suffering:, often to 
 be relieved by the hand of charity, because 
 the government could not borrow money to 
 meet these most imperious claims, he, though 
 abounding in wealth of his own, and the al¬ 
 moner of that of others, had not a dollar for 
 
 those heroic men fighting his battles, nor for 
 their starving families, suffering for the same 
 great cause. This announcement of Horatio 
 Seymour, that he did not lend his money to 
 the government in the hour of its extreme 
 need is a cowardly and unpatriotic avowal, 
 which should bring to him, not the suffrages 
 and honors of the people, but their blasting re¬ 
 bukes and withering scorn. The “ Knights of 
 the Golden Circle,” the “ Sons of Liberty,” the 
 holders of the bonds of the Confederate govern¬ 
 ment, the men, North and South, who, in the 
 language of a son of Maryland, “ would not 
 pay the bondholders because the money was 
 loaned for the wicked purpose of fighting our 
 Southern brethren,” may applaud this boastful 
 announcement; but the patriotic men, and the 
 men whose wives and children were the vic¬ 
 tims of his unpatriotic action, will applaud him 
 never. (Applause, and cries of “ No, never.”) 
 
 When the Legal Tender Act was pending in 
 the House of Representatives, Pendleton, now 
 nicknamed “ Young Greenbacks,” declared that 
 these legal tender notes would go out to the 
 country “ with the mark of Cain upon them ;” 
 that they would be “ wanderers and vagabonds 
 in the landand wherever they wandered, 
 they would carry bankruptcy and repudiation. 
 Evils are indeed inseparable from paper 
 money. But the benefits to the country of 
 that Legal Tender Act during the war can 
 never be overestimated. Pendleton, who led 
 in opposition to its adoption, as a temporary 
 measure, in times of dire necessity—he who 
 deemed “ greenbacks ” “ wanderers and vaga¬ 
 bonds,” with the “ mark of Cain ” upon them— 
 assumes the championship now of a system so 
 modified, that his prediction, that they would 
 lead to bankruptcy and repudiation, may be 
 realized. (A voice: “ Oh! he is played out.”) 
 
 TRIUMPHS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 
 
 For many years the toiling millions demand¬ 
 ed that the public domain should be withheld 
 from the hard grasp of the speculator, and 
 granted, in limited quantities, to actual set¬ 
 tlers. This demand, of land for the landless, 
 of small farms tilled by men standing on their 
 own acres, was made in the interests of free¬ 
 dom, culture, development, and Christian civili¬ 
 zation. It was the idea of the farm against the 
 plantation—of free labor against slave labor 
 —of the perennial verdure of liberty against 
 the blight and mildew of slavery. The slave- 
 masters of the great plantations, the accepted 
 leaders of the Democracy, were as sternly op¬ 
 posed to the policy of small farms and “ land for 
 the landless ” as they were to “ free soil ’’ for 
 free labor. The Republican party coming into 
 power, the representative of this policy of free 
 soil for free labor—of the farm against the 
 plantation—of land for the landless—conse¬ 
 crated all the public domain to freedom, and, 
 by legislative enactments, set apart more than 
 a thousand million of acres as homesteads for 
 actual settlers. To the Republican party are 
 the landless toilers of our country indebted for 
 this beneficent system—this splendid inherit¬ 
 ance for themselves and their posterity. 
 
 J udge the Republican party, during its seven 
 years of power, by its deeds ; test it by its de- 
 
10 
 
 fense and protection of tlie nation against the 
 most gigantic conspiracy of ancient or modern 
 times, by its development of the nation’s power 
 and the advancement of its material interests, 
 and it stands on a higher plane than that of 
 any political organization on the globe. 
 
 But grander far than the raising of armies 
 and the creation of navies, than marches or 
 sieges or battles on land or wave, was the far- 
 reaching, comprehensive, and crowning deed 
 of emancipation. That huge, hideous, and 
 horrid system of human bondage in Christian 
 America, upheld by the aggregated interest of 
 $3,000,000,000 in the flesh and blood, brain 
 and soul of man, hedged about by the accumu¬ 
 lated passions and prejudices, prides and ambi¬ 
 tions of seven generations, intrenched within 
 the social, political, and ecclesiastical organiza¬ 
 tions and affiliations of life, was shivered to 
 atoms by the blows, sturdy and persistent, of 
 the Republican party. By a series of executive 
 and legislative acts, it broke the chains and 
 lifted from the depths of chattelhood up to the 
 summits of manhood four and a half millions 
 of beings made in the image of God. It was 
 said of Wilberforce that he went to God with 
 the shackles of eight hundred thousand West- 
 India slaves in his hands. The Republican 
 party enters the forum of the nations with four 
 and a half millions of riven fetters in one 
 hand, and four and a half million of title-deeds 
 of American citizenship in the other. These 
 broken fetters—these title-deeds—it holds up 
 to the gaze of the living present and the ad¬ 
 vancing future. In the progress of the ages 
 it has been given to few generations, in any 
 form or by any modes, to achieve a work so 
 vast, so grand, so sure to be recorded by the 
 historic pen or flung upon the canvas in en¬ 
 during colors. Defeat and disaster may come 
 upon the Republican party—it may perish ut¬ 
 terly from the land it saved and made free— 
 but its name will be forever associated with 
 the emancipation of millions of a poor, friend¬ 
 less, and hated race, their elevation to the 
 heights of citizenship, their exaltation to equal¬ 
 ity of civil rights and privileges, and, crown¬ 
 ing act of all, the prerogative “ to vote and to 
 be voted for.” These beneficent deeds will 
 live in the hearts of coming generations, and 
 “ brighter glow and gleam immortal, uncon¬ 
 sumed by moth or rust.” (Cheers.) 
 
 THE DISGRACED DEMOCRACY. 
 
 In this grand work, applauded by earth and 
 blest of heaven, the Democratic party had no 
 part whatever. For more than a quarter of a 
 century, before slavery raised the banners of 
 civil war, it had been its pliant tool, ever swift 
 to come to its support before it was called, and 
 run on its errands before it was sent. Ever 
 prompt to obey its decrees, the Democracy 
 clung to the relentless and unappeasable foe of 
 the country after that foe had inspired a bloody 
 revolution to blot the North-American Repub¬ 
 lic from the map of nations. After civil war 
 had reddened the bright waters and green 
 fields with the blood of our slain sons—after 
 it had sent wounds, sickness, and sorrows into 
 the homes of the people—the Democratic party 
 persistently continued to resist every measure 
 
 for the nation’s defense, if that measure tend¬ 
 ed, in the slightest degree, to weaken the ad¬ 
 mitted cause of all our woe. Throughout the 
 war, of which slavery was the inspiration, the 
 heart, and soul, and long after it became clear 
 to the comprehension of intelligent patriotism 
 that its death would be the annihilation of the 
 rebellion, the unity of the Republic, the life 
 of the nation, the harmonious development of 
 free institutions, the repose, culture, and re¬ 
 nown of the people, the Democratic party 
 mourned, and would not be comforted, over 
 every blow struck at the retreating fiend. 
 (Sensation.) 
 
 As during the seven years from 1854 to 
 1861, when in possession of power, so during 
 the seven years from 1861 to 1868, when out 
 of power, the Democratic party has been the 
 deadliest foe of the African race and of its 
 friends. It has scoffed at, and jeered at, every 
 generous, humane, and ennobling idea, and 
 steadfastly striven to defeat every measure to 
 make it free, recognize its rights, or elevate its 
 condition. It resisted making freeelaves used 
 by rebels for military purposes at the opening 
 of the war, and the act forbidding officers of 
 the army to return fugitives seeking the pro¬ 
 tection of the national flag—the abolition of 
 slavery in the nation’s capital and the prohibi¬ 
 tion of slavery in the national Territories— 
 the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and the 
 freedom of slaves captured or coming within 
 the lines of our armies—the recognition of the 
 nationality of Hayti and Liberia, and Mr. Lin¬ 
 coln’s Proclamation of Emancipation—the en¬ 
 rollment of black soldiers to fight the battles 
 of the country and the freedom of black sol¬ 
 diers, their wives and their children—the ad¬ 
 mission of the colored people of the District of 
 Columbia to the right to testify in the courts 
 and to the right to ride in the public convey¬ 
 ances—the constitutional amendment forever 
 abolishing slavery in the United States, and 
 the Freedmen’s Bureau for the aid, protection, 
 and education of emancipated bondsmen—suf¬ 
 frage to colored men in the District of Colum¬ 
 bia and in the Territories of the United States 
 —the Civil Rights measure, securing to black 
 men the full and equal benefit of all laws for 
 the security of person and property, and the 
 amendment to the Constitution, providing that 
 no person shall be denied equal protection of 
 the laws equalizing representation, so that 
 three of Wade Hampton’s troopers shall no 
 longer count the same as seven of the loyal 
 soldiers of the North, and forbidding the pay¬ 
 ment of the rebel debt or payment for slaves 
 emancipated — the Reconstruction measure, 
 giving to colored men in rebel States the right 
 to vote, and the acts for restoring the seven 
 reconstructed States to their practical relations 
 to the government. During all the struggles 
 for these and kindred measures, by which sla¬ 
 very has been abolished and the freedmen 
 elevated to the full rights and privileges of 
 American citizenship in the States lately in 
 rebellion, the Democratic party has appealed 
 and now appeals to the basest passions and 
 prejudices, still to oppress this people and hin¬ 
 der the realization of their new-born hopes in¬ 
 spired by emancipation. To keep them in 
 bondage and still to prevent their develop- 
 
11 
 
 ment, it lias studiously misrepresented the 
 sentiments, opinions, and acts of their friends. 
 No character however pure, no services how¬ 
 ever exalted, could preserve any man, or set 
 of men, from their obloquy, foul abuse, and 
 viperous malignity. (“ That is true.” 
 
 THE CHICAGO REBEL CONTENTION. 
 
 In 1864, when Grant was holding Lee in his 
 grasp in the rebel capital, and Sherman was 
 fighting his bloody way to Atlanta, when 
 patriot hearts were cheered by the hope of 
 soon subjugating the rebellion, the Demo¬ 
 cratic party assembled at Chicago. Horatio 
 Seymour presided. The convention, inspired 
 by slavery and in sympathy with their rebel 
 Democratic friends in rebellion, resolved that 
 the “ war is a failure,” and demanded “ the 
 cessation of hostilities.” The Republican party 
 met in convention, declared for the complete 
 abolition of slavery, the subj ugation of the re¬ 
 bellion, and the reelection of Abraham Lincoln. 
 These two parties, numbering more than four 
 millions of voters, went to the ballot-box. The 
 Republicans invoked the patriotism, the love 
 of liberty, and the self-sacrificing spirit of the 
 country. The Democrats appealed to coward¬ 
 ly fears, selfish instincts, and unreasoning pas¬ 
 sions and prejudices. The Democracy, boast¬ 
 ful as is its wont, received 21 out of 234 elec¬ 
 toral votes, and was beaten by a popular ma¬ 
 jority of more than 400,000 votes. The spirit 
 of the rebellion was thus broken. The hopes 
 of the rebel chiefs, excited by Democratic as¬ 
 surances, were crushed, and, in a few months, 
 the rebel armies surrendered to our advancing 
 legions. (Long continued and vociferous cheer¬ 
 ing.) 
 
 ANOTHER STRUGGLE. 
 
 In November there is to be another struggle 
 between these two parties for the control of the 
 national administration. The Republican party 
 met at Chicago, reaffirmed its policy of recon¬ 
 struction, pronounced against all forms of re¬ 
 pudiation, for the reduction and equalization 
 of taxation, for the equal protection of Ameri¬ 
 can citizens, for the recognized obligations to 
 our soldiers, and to the widows and orphans, 
 of the gallant dead, and for the removal of re¬ 
 strictions imposed upon rebels as rapidly as 
 the safety of the loyal people will admit. The 
 convention then presented the name of General 
 Grant, the great captain who has so often 
 marshaled our armies to victory ; and Schuy¬ 
 ler Colfax, a statesman of pure life, stainless 
 honor, and commanding influence 
 
 THE NEW-YORK REBEL CONVENTION. 
 
 The Democratic party assembled in national 
 convention in New-York. Horatio Seymour 
 again presided. That selection of its presid¬ 
 ing officer was a monition to the country that 
 this convention would be no more patriotic or 
 •wise than was the Democratic convention of 
 1864. There assembled the self-same leaders, 
 or their compeers, that pronounced, in 1864, 
 the war, to preserve the nation’s life, “ a fail¬ 
 ure,” and demanded “ a cessation of hostilities,” 
 which would have made inevitable a dismem¬ 
 berment of the Republic and the death of the 
 
 nation. To that convention came also a few 
 disappointed, sour, and fallen spirits, who once 
 were enlisted with the legions of Liberty, but 
 who were never imbued with the generous and 
 ennobling impulses of Human Equality. There 
 came, too, the exponents and representatives 
 of the “ lost cause.” These representatives were 
 not the men whose eyes had been opened in the 
 storm of civil war to see the error of secession, 
 and who had repented of their treason against 
 the best government in the world—treason 
 made in the interest of the wickedest rebellion 
 in history—a rebellion recognizing slavery as 
 the normal condition of society in Christian 
 America and the corner-stone of their new 
 government. These were the men in whose 
 bosoms still burned the aggressive and domi¬ 
 nating spirit of oppression and caste. These 
 were the men who, with no change of feeling, 
 sentiment, or purpose, came to retrieve in the 
 arena of politics what they had lost on the field, 
 of battle. There was Wade Hampton, of Soutli- 
 Carolina, who, on his way to the convention, 
 said to the students of General Lee’s college, 
 “ The cause for which Stonewall Jackson fell, 
 can not be in vain, but in some form will yet 
 triumph.” There was Gov. Vance, of North- 
 Carolina, who told rebel troops, during the war, 
 to “ pile hell so full of Yankees that their feet 
 will stick out of the windows.” There was 
 Buckner, of Kentucky, who came to Washing¬ 
 ton, at the opening of the war, to procure arms 
 for his State and a commission for himself; 
 but who went back to Kentucky, betrayed his 
 State and country, joined the rebel ranks, and 
 was afterward forced to surrender “ uncon¬ 
 ditionally ” to Gen. Grant. There w r as Preston, 
 also of Kentucky, who abandoned his State, 
 became a rebel general, a commissioner and 
 conspirator in Europe, against his country. 
 There was Basil Duke, one of John Morgan’s 
 lieutenants in his thieving, robbing, and mur¬ 
 derous raids through Ohio and Indiana. There 
 was Robert Ould, of Virginia, rebel general 
 and commissioner, and familiar with the hor¬ 
 rors of Belle Isle and Libby Prison. There 
 was Forrest, of Fort Pillow infamy, concerning 
 whose fiendish conduct a Congressional com¬ 
 mittee thus reports : “ Of the men, from 300 
 to 400 are known to have been killed at Fort 
 Pillow, of whom at least Three Hundred 
 were murdered in cold Mood after the post was 
 in possession of the rebels, and our men had 
 thrown down their arms and ceased to offer re¬ 
 sistance i.” Of 182 members of the convention, 
 from the rebel States, there was not one Union 
 man of well-known and approved loyalty. 
 There were more rebel soldiers than soldiers 
 of the Union army—more members of Jeff 
 Davis’s Congress than of the Congress of the 
 United States. Is there any wonder, then, 
 that one, who had heard the rebel battle yell 
 in the land of the rebellion, should have in¬ 
 stinctively exclaimed, “ the rebel yell,” as he 
 heard the shout that arose at the words of 
 Wade Hampton’s resolution, declaring the Re-' 
 construction Acts “ revolutionary, unconstitu¬ 
 tional, and void ” ? 
 
 the young greenback’s swindle. 
 
 The financial portion of the Democratic 
 platform was dictated by Pendleton. That 
 
12 
 
 great financial genius seems to be hugely 
 pleased with his work. It is, however, a 
 cheat, a delusion, and a snare. The govern¬ 
 ment owes a bonded debt paying interest, and 
 a non paying interest debt. If this platform 
 means that the government shall redeem the 
 bonds with the greenback debt, now issued, 
 then it is a simple swindle, for the government 
 has none of its greenback debt to use for that 
 purpose. If it is meant that the government, 
 in violation of its pledge, shall issue more of 
 its non-interest paying debts to redeem the 
 interest-bearing debt, then it means a further 
 depreciated currency, the derangement of 
 legitimate business, the robbery of honest 
 labor, ruinous losses, bankruptcy, and ultimate 
 repudiation. (Many voices : “ That’s true doc¬ 
 trine.”) 
 
 A REBEL MAKES THE PLATFORM. 
 
 Wade Hampton claims the honor of having 
 constructed so much of the platform, touching 
 reconstruction, etc., as declares it to be “rev¬ 
 olutionary, unconstitutional, and void.” In a 
 speech to the men of South-Carolina, he says : 
 “ I said I would take the resolutions if they 
 would allow me to add but three words, which 
 you will find embodied in the platform. I 
 added this: ‘ And we declare that the recon¬ 
 struction acts are revolutionary, unconstitu¬ 
 tional, and void. 5 When I proposed that, every 
 single member of the committee—and the 
 warmest men in it were the men of the North 
 —came forward and said they would carry it 
 out to the end.” The committee on the plat¬ 
 form and the convention accept from Wade 
 Hampton this declaration, and they pledge 
 themselves to carry it out to the end. What 
 that “ end” is to be, is embodied in this 
 declaration of their candidate for the vice¬ 
 presidency. In his letter which secured his 
 nomination, Mr. Blair says: “ There is but 
 one way to restore the government and the 
 constitution, and that is to declare the recon¬ 
 struction acts null and void, compel the army 
 to undo its usurpations at the South, disperse 
 the carpet-bag State governments, and allow 
 the white people to reorganize their own gov¬ 
 ernments and elect senators and representa¬ 
 tives. We must have a president who will 
 execute the will of the people by trampling 
 into dust the usurpations of Congress known 
 as the reconstruction acts. I wish to stand 
 before the convention upon this issue, as it is 
 one which embraces every thing else that is of 
 value in its large and comprehensive results.” 
 
 REBEL OPINIONS. 
 
 The platform having been constructed, the 
 persuasive Vallandigham overcame the scru¬ 
 ples of the coyish Seymour, who consented to 
 be “caught by the whirling tide. 55 Under the 
 lead of Preston, Hampton, and Forest, the con¬ 
 vention associated the dashing Blair with the 
 timorous Seymour. This disunion platform, 
 declaring the reconstruction of seven States 
 and their representation in Congress “ rev¬ 
 olutionary, unconstitutional, and void”—this 
 ticket, pledged to “ declare the reconstruction 
 acts null and void, compel the army to undo 
 its usurpations, disperse the carpet-bag State 
 governments, and allow the white people to 
 
 reorganize their own governments and elect 
 senators and representatives”—is indorsed by 
 the Northern Democracy with the 6ame cordi¬ 
 ality with which they indorsed the platform 
 of 1864, declaring “the war a failure,” and 
 demanding “ the cessation of hostilities.” 
 Southern Democrats, who could not indorse 
 the Democratic platform of 1864, or support 
 its ticket, because three quarters of a million 
 of “boys in blue” stood between them and 
 their Northern friends, could leap over the 
 graves of three hundred and fifty thousand 
 dead heroes, and fraternally embrace their 
 sympathizing friends, who have ever main¬ 
 tained that the government could not “ coerce 
 a State” or “subjugate the South,” and in¬ 
 dorse platform and ticket. Henry A. Wise 
 proclaims that “ secession is more alive than 
 ever,” and he supports Seymour and Blair 
 because they will “ assume military power” 
 for the overthrow of the reconstructed govern¬ 
 ments of the South. Vance boasted to the 
 people of Richmond, on his way home from 
 the New-York convention, that “ the South 
 would gain by the election of Seymour and 
 Blair all it fought for in the rebellion.” Ad¬ 
 miral Semmes, who commanded the Alabama 
 when the Kearsage, in the face of Europe, 
 sent her to the bottom of the seas, and who 
 revenged himself by destroying unarmed 
 Yankee whalers after the rebellion had been 
 subdued, said, in a ratification speech at 
 Mobile : “ I have been a Democrat all my life, 
 before the war, during the war, and since the 
 war, and fought the war on the principles of 
 the Democracy. . . . The grand old Demo¬ 
 
 cratic party has arisen from its long slumber 
 —and the election of Seymour and Blair will 
 reduce the negro to a subordinate position as 
 an inferior race. 55 Percy Walker told the same 
 Mobile assemblage that this is the first time, 
 since Lee tendered to the enemy that sword 
 which “ flashed victoriously over so many 
 battle-fields, that I have seen a light on the 
 clouds hanging over the South ; 55 for “ the 
 great Democratic party has taken up our 
 cause.” Robert Toombs, who went into the 
 rebellion for the right to call the roll of his 
 slaves on Bunker Hill, and came out of the 
 rebellion without the right to call that roll on 
 his own plantation, vauntingly proclaimed to 
 the Democracy of Georgia, gathered in mass 
 convention at Atlanta, that, “as the late war 
 was produced by the defeated Democratic 
 party in 5 60, we shall never have peace till it 
 is restored in ’68.” He divines the mission of 
 the party, for he tells the delighted Georgians 
 that “ the grinning skeletons which have been 
 set up in our midst as legislators shall be 
 ousted by Frank Blair, whom the Democratic 
 party has expressly appointed for that purpose. 
 All these things shall be swept from the 
 bosom of the country.” Howell Cobb, denounc¬ 
 ing Governor Brown, the loyal white men of 
 Georgia, and repentant rebels and loyal men, 
 who are honestly striving to secure peace, 
 order, and law, as traitors to the country, thus 
 characterizes and counsels concerning them: 
 “ You owe it to the living, you owe it to your 
 own children and to their children. Write down 
 in their memories this day and all days and 
 for all time to come the feeling and spirit of 
 
13 
 
 abhorrence with which you regard and estimate 
 these men. O Heaven ! for some blistering 
 words that I may write infamy upon the fore¬ 
 head of these men; that they may travel 
 through earth despised of all men and rejected 
 of heaven, scorned by the devil himself. They 
 may seek their final congenial resting-place 
 under the mudsills of that ancient institution.” 
 This reconstructed Democrat is the same 
 Howell Cobb, of whom Andrew Johnson said: 
 “ Cobb remained in the Cabinet until the 
 treasury was bankrupt and the national credit 
 disgraced at home and abroad, and then he 
 conscientiously seceded.” 
 
 THE KU-KLUX DEMOCRACY. 
 
 These are but specimen utterances which 
 unrepentant and Southern Democratic politi¬ 
 cians are pouring into the too willing ear of 
 the people of the South, lately in rebellion 
 against their country. The declaration of 
 General Blair, in favor of trampling in the 
 dust the Reconstruction Acts, instantly aroused 
 the rebel element of the South and sent the 
 Ku-Klux Klans on their errands of insult, out¬ 
 rage and death. No wonder that the rebel 
 Gen. Preston hastened to nominate the author 
 of that rebel-inspiring letter as the candidate 
 for the Vice-Presidency ; no wonder that Wade 
 Hampton leaped to the floor to second the 
 nomination ; no wonder that Fort Pillow For¬ 
 rest, who now declares that, in a certain event, 
 he will “ toot his horn” for the rising of his 
 “ old troopers,” and who, as at Fort Pillow, 
 will “ give no quarter,” announced with so 
 much unction the vote of Tennessee. Blair’s 
 disorganizing, seditious, and revolutionary let¬ 
 ter struck a responsive chord in the bosoms of 
 the Southern Democratic leaders. These de¬ 
 legates assured their Northern political asso¬ 
 ciates that they could carry the reconstructed 
 States for the greenback and grayback ticket. 
 The bolder of the rebel leaders hardly disguise 
 their purpose to seize the polls and have only 
 the white vote cast and counted. Wade 
 Hampton called on his Democratic associates 
 in New-York to “ register an oath” that they 
 would place Seymour and Blair in the White 
 House, if they received the majority of white 
 votes, “ in spite of all the bayonets that can 
 be brought against them.” This rebel trooper 
 and Democratic leader tells the people of the 
 South “ not to employ any one, white or black, 
 who gives his aid to the Republican party.” 
 And this proposition is generally approved 
 and applauded by Southern politicians and 
 presses, though so cruel and oppressive to the 
 poor laboring men, houseless and homeless, 
 who will thus be compelled to exercise the 
 right of suffrage under duress, and with the 
 menace constantly before them of being driven 
 from their humble cabins and dispossessed 
 even of the fields they are cultivating on 
 shares. 
 
 A RESULT OF REPUBLICAN SUCCESS. 
 
 I need dwell but briefly on what the Repub¬ 
 lican party proposes to do. Its history, its 
 platform, and its candidates speak to the full 
 comprehension of the American people. To 
 that history, to that platform, and to those can¬ 
 
 didates it points with confidence and pride. 
 It appeals, as ever, to the higher and better 
 sentiments and impulses of the nation. (Ap¬ 
 plause.) It appeals to that comprehensive 
 patriotism, which embraces the whole country 
 and the people of the whole country, to that 
 love of liberty which accords equal rights to all 
 men, to that sense of justice that gives equal 
 protection to the poor man’s cabin and the rich 
 man’s mansion, and to that humanity that lifts 
 up the lowly and the weak. If success crowns 
 its efforts, if the administration shall be in¬ 
 trusted to General Grant, with a House of Re¬ 
 presentatives to sustain that administration, 
 the policy of reconstruction will be perfected, 
 the States will all be speedily restored to their 
 practical relations to the general government, 
 equal rights will be assured and disabilities 
 removed, the nation’s faith will be untarnished, 
 its currency and credit improved, and “ Peace,” 
 in the language of Mr. Lincoln, “ will come 
 to stay.” Then the blood, poured out like 
 autumnal rains, will not have been shed in 
 vain ; for then united and free America, with 
 liberty for all and justice to all, will enter 
 upon a career of development, culture, and 
 progress, that shall insure a “ future grand 
 and great.” (Loud cheering.) 
 
 THE TRAITOROUS DEMOCRACY. 
 
 No less significant and no less pronounced 
 are the history, the platform, and the candi 
 dates of the Democratic party. Its history 
 recalls no inspiring ideas, no beneficent poli¬ 
 cies, no ennobling deeds for patriotism, for 
 liberty, for justice, and for humanity. But it 
 does recall images of slavery—its shackles, its 
 whips, its unrequited toils and its all-pervading 
 impurities—the slave power, its arrogant 
 dominations and aggressive demands, ever 
 associated with humiliating concessions, com¬ 
 promises and apostasies to freedom; dark 
 conspiracies, lawless rebellion, fields of blood, 
 taxation, debts, and the graves of the nation’s 
 dead. Its platform speaks of the Recon¬ 
 struction, Acts as “revolutionary, unconsti¬ 
 tutional, and void,”—beneficent acts by which 
 seven disorganized commonwealths were re¬ 
 organized on the basis of loyalty and lib¬ 
 erty, and restored to representation in Con¬ 
 gress and to the blessings and benefits of 
 the Union. Its candidates are pledged to 
 “ trample in the dust those reorganized and 
 restored commonwealths, their constitutions 
 and laws, by which equal rights and privileges 
 are accorded and secured to all. Those can¬ 
 didates are also pledged for that unconstitu¬ 
 tional, un-American, and wicked monstrosity, 
 so alien in spirit and tone to the Declaration 
 of Independence and the utterances of the 
 fathers, “ a White Man’s Government ,” in place 
 of the constitutional and American idea—a 
 government “ of all, by all, for all.” This re¬ 
 cord of fourteen years, this platform, and these 
 candidates, the wild, revolutionary, and disor¬ 
 ganizing utterances of Blair, Toombs, Cobb, 
 and other Southern Democratic leaders, speak, 
 in language not to be misunderstood by the 
 country, the purposes of the Democratic party, 
 and wnAT it proposes to do. The currency 
 is to be farther depreciated ; the public faith 
 
14 
 
 broken, and the national honor tainted; State 
 constitutions are to he abrogated; the civil 
 rights of millions impaired ; the right to vote, 
 now a possession, taken from three fourths of 
 a million of working-men; the education of 
 the people, so longed for by the poor of both 
 races, is to be postponed; hatreds, insults, and 
 outrages to the loyal are to be intensified ; 
 the soldier, who fought for the restoration of 
 the seceding States, and who now hopes, by 
 his skilled industry, to make the war-wasted 
 fields of the South bloom once more, is to be 
 forced to leave his new home, and the malig¬ 
 nant spirit of slavery and caste is to rule 
 again. Then this murderous advice of Albert 
 Pike, the friend and champion of Blair and 
 Seymour, addressed to the young men of Mis¬ 
 sissippi, may be accepted and followed to 
 “ the bitter end 
 
 “ Young men, it is for you to bring back to 
 the country its golden days. The South is our 
 land. The North is a foreign and hostile 
 realm. Stand at the altar of your country. 
 Swear eternal hatred to its oppressors. Swear 
 that the day shall come when the Susquehan¬ 
 
 na and Ohio shall he like rivers of fire, as 
 they are now rivers of blood, between your 
 native land and that of the northern Huns, 
 which no man shall attempt to cross and 
 live.” 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 With one or the other of these two great 
 parties, fellow-citizens, you are constrained to 
 act in the coming election of a President of the 
 United States. Consider well, I pray you, the 
 histories, the platforms, and candidates of these 
 parties now asking your suffrages. Remember 
 that by its fruits the tree is known, and by his 
 deeds man is judged. Apply to these political 
 organizations those words of Holy Writ. Test 
 them by the high standards of love of country 
 and love of man, and vote as they prompt and 
 approve. So voting, you shall do something 
 to heal the wounds of war, rebuke and repress 
 lawlessness and violence, develop the material 
 and moral forces of the land, secure equality 
 of rights and privileges, and thus lift our 
 country to its predestined rank among th« 
 nations. (Long-continued cheering.) 
 
 Uc 
 
PLATFORM 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REPUBLICAN PARTY. 
 
 ❖ 
 
 The following Platform, reported by the 
 Committee on Resolutions, was unanimously 
 adopted by the National Republican Conven¬ 
 tion at Chicago: 
 
 First. We congratulate the country on the 
 assured success of the reconstruction policy of 
 Congre s, as evinced by the adoption, in a ma¬ 
 jority of the States lately in rebellion, of con¬ 
 stitutions securing equal civil and political 
 rights to all, and regard it as the duty of the 
 Government to sustain those constitutions, and 
 to prevent the people of such States from be¬ 
 ing remitted to a state of anarchy or military 
 
 rule. 
 
 Second. The guarantee by Congress of equal 
 suffrage to all loyal men at the South was de¬ 
 manded by every consideration of public safe¬ 
 ty, ot gratitude, and of justice, and must be 
 maintained ; while the question of suffrage in 
 all the loyal States properly belongs to the 
 people or those States. 
 
 Third. We denounce all forms of repudia¬ 
 tion as a national crime, and national honor 
 requires the payment of the public indebted¬ 
 ness in the utmost good faith to all creditors 
 at home ana abroad not only according to the 
 letter, out the spirit of the laws under which 
 it was contracted. 
 
 Fourth. It is due to the labor of the nation 
 that taxation should be equalized and reduced 
 as rapidly as the national faith will permit. 
 
 Fifth. The national debt, contracted as it 
 1ms been for the preservation of the Union for 
 all time to come, should be extended over a 
 
 
 
 fair period for redemption ; and it is the duty 
 of Congress to reduce the rate of interest 
 thereon, whenever it can honestly be done. 
 
 Sixth. That the best policy to diminish our 
 burden of debt is to so improve our credit that 
 capitalists will seek to loan us money at lower 
 rates of interest than we now pay, and must 
 continue to pay so long as repudiation, partial 
 or total, open or covert, is threatened or sus¬ 
 pected. 
 
 Seventh. The Government of the United 
 States should be administered with the strict¬ 
 est economy; and the corruptions which have 
 been so shamefully nursed and fostered by An¬ 
 drew Johnson call loudly for radical reform. 
 
 Eighth. We profoundly deplore the untime¬ 
 ly and tragic death of Abraham Lincoln, and 
 regret the accession of Andrew Johnson to the 
 Presidency, who has acted treacherously to the 
 people who elected him and the cause he was 
 pledged to support; has usurped high legisla¬ 
 tive and judicial functions ; has refused to exe¬ 
 cute the laws; has used his high office to induce 
 other officers to ignore and violate the laws: 
 has employed his executive powers to render 
 insecure the property, peace, liberty, and life 
 of the citizen ; has abused the pardoning 
 power; has denounced the National Legisla¬ 
 ture as unconstitutional; has persistently and 
 corruptly resisted, by every means in his 
 power, every proper attempt at the reconstruc¬ 
 tion of the States lately in rebellion ; has per¬ 
 verted the public patronage into an engine of 
 wholesale corruption, and has been justly im¬ 
 peached for high crimes and misdemeanors, 
 
16 
 
 and properly pronounced guilty thereof by 
 the votes of thirty-five Senators. 
 
 Ninth. The doctrine of Great Britain and 
 other European powers, that because a man is 
 once a subject he is always so, must be resisted 
 at every hazard by the United States as a relic 
 of the feudal times not authorized by the law 
 of nations and at war with our national honor 
 and independence. Naturalized citizens are 
 entitled to be protected in all their rights of 
 citizenship as though they were native born, 
 and no citizen of the United States, native or 
 naturalized, must be liable to arrest and im¬ 
 prisonment by any foreign power for acts done 
 or words spoken in this country. And if so 
 arrested and imprisoned, it is the duty of the 
 Government co interfere in his behalf. 
 
 Tenth. Of all who were faithful in the trials 
 of the late war, there were none entitled to 
 more especial honor than the brave soldiers 
 and seamen who endured the hardships of 
 campaign and cruize, and imperiled their 
 lives in the service of the country. The boun¬ 
 ties and pensions provided by law r for these 
 brave defenders of the nation are obligations 
 never to be forgotten. The widows and or¬ 
 phans of the gallant dead are the wards of the 
 people, a sacred legacy bequeathed to the na¬ 
 tion’s protecting care. 
 
 Eleventh. Foreign emigration, which in the 
 past has added so much to the wealth, develop¬ 
 
 ment of resources, and increase of power of 
 this nation, “ the asylum of the oppressed of all 
 nations,” should be fostered and encouraged by 
 a liberal and just policy. 
 
 Twelfth. This Convention declares its sym¬ 
 pathy with all the oppressed peoples who are 
 struggling for their rights. 
 
 On motion of General Carl Schurz, the fol¬ 
 lowing additional resolutions were unanimous¬ 
 ly adopted as part of the platform : 
 
 Resolved, That we highly commend the spirit 
 of magnanimity and forbearance with which 
 the men who have served in the rebellion, but 
 now frankly and honestly cooperate with us in 
 restoring the peace of the country and recon 
 structing the Southern State governments 
 upon the basis of impartial justice and equal 
 rights, are received back into the communion 
 of the loyal people; and we favor the removal 
 of the disqualifications and restrictions im¬ 
 posed upon the late rebels in the same measure 
 as the spirit of disloyalty wfill die out, and as 
 may be consistent with the safety of the loyal 
 people. 
 
 Resolved, That we recognize the great prin¬ 
 ciples laid down in the immortal Declaration 
 of Independence as the true foundation of de¬ 
 mocratic government, and we hail with glad¬ 
 ness every effort toward making these prim 
 ciples a living reality on every inch of Ameri¬ 
 can soil.